Kids Books to Keep Forever

The list this week comes from Mamamia recently. They had a podcast discussion of the toys and books that we should keep instead of throwing away. I love that they viewed it as an anti KonMari moment- I've just read the book and am working on my review. I did wonder about this sort of thing along the way, if you throw everything out what is left for the next generation?

Koala Lou - Mem Fox, Pamela Lofts (illustrator)

Possum Magic - Mem Fox, Julie Vivas (illustrator)

The BFG - Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illustrator)

The Poky Little Puppy - Janette Sebring Lowrey, Gustaf Tenggren (illustrator)

There's A Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake - Hazel Edwards, Deborah Niland (illustrator)

The Tiger Who Came To Tea - Judith Kerr

The Witches - Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake (illustrator) (see my review)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle

The Complete Adventures Of Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie - May Gibbs

8/9

My best list result ever! I became rather excited when clicking through the list gallery on the website. Would I actually have read all the books? Tension built as each title came up, until the very last. I have seen a play of Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie and possibly read it as a child, or had it read to me, but I don't remember so it doesn't count. 

The BFG is one of my favourite Dahl's, and one of my favourite books ever. 

Happy People Read & Drink Coffee

I didn't really know anything about Happy People Read & Drink Coffee when I first saw it- but I really liked the cover. An author with a Clearly French name. Picture of a Parisian femme on the cover. Eiffel Tower on cover. And title about Happy People Reading (YAY) and drinking coffee (YUCK). Soon I was buying a copy. And then I saw a none too flattering short review in the Herald. Should I read it? I figured it would be a good travelling read, nice for sitting on buses and around airports. It's fairly short and the font is pretty big.

It's not really the Paris story I was expecting though. More a Parisian story. Thirty something Diane has been widowed for a year. Her husband Colin and five year old daughter, Clara, are killed off in a car accident on page 2. And Diane really isn't coping. She has been unable to work for the past year, and her literary café, Happy People Read & Drink Coffee is being run by her friend and business partner Felix. Instead Diane remains holed up in her Paris apartment- it's been a year and she hasn't changed the sheets on her bed, hoping instead to retain some scent of her husband. I'm sure they have plenty of aroma, none of it his. 

Today, as every day for the past year, utter silence reigned in our apartment. No music, no laughter, no endless conversations. 

Diane decides rather rashly to go to Ireland for a lengthy stay because it was a dream of her dead husband Colin to travel there. He liked a bit of Guinness it seems. She takes a cottage in a remote Irish village and holes herself up there just as she'd done in Paris. She soon meets and instantly dislikes her taciturn and grumpy neighbour Edward. 

I found it really rather difficult to become absorbed by Diane's story. I had some sympathy for her initially, but her developing relationship with Edward is rather unbelievable. The end is rather preposterous. Look away now if you're bothered by spoilers..... Two grown women fighting over such an unpleasant man. Really?

There are no happy people in Happy People Read and Drink Coffee. Perhaps because none of them are reading or drinking coffee. Well there's a bit of coffee drinking, but much more Guinness and wine is consumed. And way too many cigarettes. There is a dog called Postman Pat. I remain rather mystified at the choice of name for the dog, but he seems to be Postman Pat in the French edition too. I wonder what the average French reader made of that. 

I wanted to like this book I really did. Three of the ten chapters do happen to be set in Paris, but they could have been anywhere really. Although I did thrill at the mention of Rue Vieille-du-Temple, as I walked that particular rue many times in 2014. Happy People Read and Drink Coffee was initially self-published (in French, naturally, as Les Gens Heureux Lisent and Boivent du Café), it is being made into a feature film. I'm more than somewhat annoyed that Allen&Unwin didn't bother to change the American spellings in our Australian edition. 

There is a sequel - Don't Worry, Life is Easy ( La Vie est Facile, ne t'inquiete pas). I'm not sure that I'll seek it out. 

French Bingo 2016

Ransacking Paris

Naturally the cover and title of Ransacking Paris was enough to make me snatch it off the bookshop shelf as soon as I saw it last year. I just needed to find the time to read it. Happily that time came recently as I prepared to see Patti Miller speak at the Newcastle Writers Festival. I'd started the book at least by the time I got to take my seat in the We Will Always Have Paris session on the Sunday morning.

Ransacking Paris tells the tale of a year Patti spent living and writing in Paris with her husband/partner. It seems to have been a bit of a while ago, some 15 years ago now. Patti had taken a small apartment in Montmartre on Rue des Trois Frères to write a memoir about her friend Dina who died suddenly leaving her young son Theo. Patti Miller was to look after Theo for 7 years and that book was to become Whatever the Gods Do, published in 2003.

Patti grew up in the Central West of NSW a mere 100 km from where I live now. So I was always very interested in her stories of growing up on a farm near Wellington. Thirteen year old Patti began French lessons in high school and it opened up a new world for her, giving her a "small distinction" amongst her eight siblings. Learning French, and learning that a dog is not just a dog but could also be un chien

hinted at the possibility of another kind of world, the faint beginning of awareness that there was a connection between language and perception. Other words for things created the idea that there was another way of seeing, of thinking, of knowing, that things didn't have to be what everyone agreed they were.

Young Patti started to dream of one day going to Paris, even though she didn't know anyone besides her French teacher who had ever been there. 

It must mean something, a dream that can propel you to the other side of the world.

Six memoirists are her companions on her year long sojourn-  Montaigne, de Sévigné, Rousseau, Stendhal, de Beauvoir and Annie Ernaux. I hadn't read any of the authors she featured, well I did read a bit of de Beauvoir back in the day, but much too long ago to remember anything more than I have actually read her. I have no sense of the books I read, or even which titles they might have been. 

Naturally I thrilled inwardly each time Patti went to somewhere I too had been - Musée Carnavalet, Tuileries, Angelinas on the Rue de Rivoli, the Luxembourg Gardens. All famous places, and not an uncommon shared experience. But I was even more excited to learn that Balzac grew up on Rue Vieille du Temple as I stayed just around the corner on my last visit in 2014. And I dined several times in Cafe des Philosophes where Patti "meets" Madame de Sévigné (a writerly device that didn't work for me- Patti told me that she had had mixed reactions to it), and while I didn't enter Les Éditeurs in the Carrefour de l'Odéon, I ate at two other establishments on the same corner, and know exactly where it is. 

I enjoyed reading her experience of the city, learning the language and making friends. Walking, walking, walking everywhere. Going to concerts every Sunday- that's such a great idea- I've been to three concerts in Paris now, all extremely enjoyable experiences. If I ever get to live in Paris for a good while then maybe I'll go to a concert every Sunday too. Patti also joined a choir which is a brilliant thing to do if you can sing. I'm not sure that I'd be there long enough to brave Shakespeare in French as Patti did though! Just the thought! Patti proclaims the experience "more fun than I'd ever had watching Shakespeare."

There are many layers to Ransacking Paris. The bees are much more than a cover motif, Patti Miller considers much in this memoir- philosophy, death, cafes and of course Paris. The narrative  flips seamlessly back and forth over time.

That was in the future, but I like the way stories thread back and forth over time, connecting things that might otherwise have been lost or left flapping in the wind. It makes time past and time present seem to be, not a line, but arcs of a spiral. 

Patti Miller returns to Paris frequently. She runs memoir writing workshops there each year. 

Why couldn't I have been young in Paris and not a middle-aged woman groping for something that was long gone?

I was hoping to have this review ready for Paris in July, but I ran out of July... Thankfully I'll never run out of Paris. 

UQP Book Club Notes

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog 

French Bingo 2016

CBCA Book of the Year Award Winners 2016

Well, another year has come and gone. Yesterday the winners of the  CBCA Awards were announced in Sydney. 

Book of the Year Older Readers Winner

Cloudwish - Fiona Wood

Fiona Wood's Acceptance Speech

Book of the Year Older Readers Honour Books

A Single Stone - Meg McKinlay
Inbetween Days - Vikki Wakefield

Book of the Year Younger Readers Winner

Soon - Morris Gleitzman

Book of the Year Younger Readers Honour Books

Sister Heart - Sally Morgan (see my review)
Star of Deltora: Shadows of the Master - Emily Rodda

Book of the Year Early Childhood Winner

Mr Huff - Anna Walker

Anna Walker's Acceptance Speech

Book of the Year Early Childhood Honour Books

Perfect - Danny Parker, Freya Blackwood (illustrator)
The Cow Tripped Over the Moon - Tony Wilson, Laura Wood (illustrator)

Book of the Year Picture Book Winner

Flight - Armin Greder (illustrator), Nadia Wheatley (text)

Book of the Year Picture Book Honour Books

Perfect - Freya Blackwood (illustrator), Danny Parker (text)
Ride, Ricardo, Ride - Shane Devries (illustrator), Phil Cummings (text)

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books Winner

Lennie the Legend: Solo to Sydney by Pony - Stephanie Owen Reeder

Stephanie Owen Reeder's Acceptance Speech

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books Honour Books

Phasmid: Saving the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect - Rohan Cleave, Coral Tulloch (illustrator)
Ancestry: Stories of Multicultural Anzacs - Robyn Siers, Carlie Walker (illustrator)

Crichton Award for New Illustrators Winner

The Underwater Fancy Dress Parade - Allison Colpoys (illustrator), Davina Bell (text)

Disappointingly for me I haven't read any of the winners as yet, and only one of the Honour Books. Ah well, I still have many more excellent books awaiting me. And this year I didn't manage to pick any of the winners by cover alone- although it does look like it was a good year for blue books.

For even more great reads check out the full shortlist and notable books.

I Need a Hug

I'm doing a really bad job of trying to read the CBCA nominated titles this year (see the Shortlist here). The winners are announced at midday today! And I haven't even managed to get through the picture books. C'est la vie I suppose.

I Need a Hug is a delightful picture book for the very youngest children, by the ever present Aaron Blabey, letting us know that everyone needs some kindness and affection sometimes. No matter how prickly

Picture Source

or slithery they are.

I Need a Hug was an Early Childhood Notable Book this year. Here is a terrific profile on Aaron Blabey, showing his cute little studio in the Blue Mountains which is full of music and musical inspiration.

Aaron feels lucky to have a job as a writer. "Our job is to make something out of nothing" and that what he does is simply "Me walking around thinking up stuff and then trying not get in the way of it". Rather incredibly his first book, Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley, was written on toilet paper (toilet paper that is now framed and on his wall)!

Top 5 Friday: Parisian Stories

Who doesn't love a Parisian story? I know I do. I found this list after I read A Little in Love (see my review) last year.

Rooftoppers - Katherine Rundell

Isla and the Happily Ever After - Stephanie Perkins

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo

The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick (see my review)

A Little in Love - Susan Fletcher (see my review)

2/5

Rooftoppers is already in my TBR. I should try and read it soon. Naturally I have The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the TBR too. I even took it to Paris one time to try and read there, but I holiday too hard there to get much reading done, and so it still languishes about unread.

Paris

I can't really remember watching a French TV series before. Movies, yes of course. I've meant to watch a few series, but never got to doing it until recently when I accidentally stumbled across a great series called Paris on SBS when my mother alerted me to a listing in the TV guide that just said Paris. Naturally that was enough for me to set the hard drive recording just to see what it was.

Paris is a new six part series, a French political thriller from the team behind Spiral- writer Virginie Brac and director Gilles Bannier. I heard of crime drama Spiral too late, and haven't been able to find it yet, but now will have to track it down somehow. 

Paris shows gives us a plot of intersecting lives over one day in that most beautiful of cities. 1 City. 1 Day. 12 Destinies. With great range of French characters covering every strata of society- the Prime Minister, a bus driver on the edge, a pregnant maid, a transgender nightclub singer, crooked judges who drink too much. There are  stray guns, union politics and lots of secrets. Naturally within ten minutes there is talk of a strike and a large political controversy.

And there is a lot of Paris scenery, sometimes incorporated into the story. Characters take the Metro, they take the bus. 

They walk down the street. 

Or peer out of taxi windows. 

And is this what happens behind all those grand doors? Liveried guards saluting the Prime Minister each time he walks past?

I stayed near the 7th in 2013
and walked past many such entrances
I was intrigued then, even more so now

Sometimes just Paris for the sake of Paris. Brief glimpses of Paris porn. 

It would be interesting enough set in Sydney or London or any other world city, but it's set in Paris and the six episodes just fly by. It's on SBS On Demand. I've already watched it twice.

Oooh, and Spiral Season 1 is on SBS On Demand! Happy Days. 

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog